1 posts from May 1998

Monday, May 25, 1998

Most people call it "summer" even though the gap between Memorial Day and Labor Day begins nearly a month before the summer solstice this year and ends two weeks before the autumnal equinox--the formal bookends of summer. And at 15 weeks, this delicious span is two weeks longer than an actual season.

Today--Monday--things change. You can hit "reset" on 1998. Those resolutions you made back in the dark, cold final days of 1997--what's left of them--now expire guiltlessly, chalked up to naivete or a fit of zeal.

Memorial Day is your chance to make a limited renewal on the ones that still seem sensible, add a few new ones and give them all a less intimidating name: Summer goals.

Clean out the garden. Organize the basement. Paint the porch. For just 105 days--about 2 1/2 times the length of Lent--refrain from cussing when kids and strangers can hear you. Get in a good vigorous walk when the weather is nice. There's time. You'll have plenty of daylight, TV will be in reruns, news will be slow if we're lucky and both you and the boss will probably take a week or two off--different weeks if all goes well.

Read three, long, good books before Labor Day propels you into a new fiscal and school year. Update your address book. Eliminate gratuitous cheese from your diet. From the 145th day of the year to the 250th, floss every night. Once a day, ask each of your kids a question that cannot have a monosyllabic answer. Write a letter of appreciation to someone who hasn't heard from you in several years. Go to the range at least once a month and spend half the time on your short game.

After honoring the nation's war dead Monday, begin a holiday from smoking--it's too hot in the summer for fire-related habits anyway. Pick up the instrument you used to play and test your chops. Wear sunscreen in honor of Mary Schmich. And that thing, you know, that's been on your mind? Sometime between now and Sept. 7, have it taken care of.

My goal, for just the next 29 percent of the year, is to drink half a gallon of water a day and spend five uninterrupted minutes every morning with my date book and to-do list. The water drinking is an old practice I abandoned about five years ago when I found it was interfering with my coffee and cola consumption, which, of course, is why I took up water drinking in the first place.

The day planning is one of those habits universally endorsed by time-management consultants, whose wisdom I eagerly absorb and then quickly disregard. I always seem to end up needing that five minutes at my desk for something more important, like sniping and speculating with colleagues.

Changing my life is too daunting a challenge; changing my summer I can handle. The possibilities are endless precisely because the Mini-Year is not. Let auld Daniel Burnham be forgot. Make some little plans.

- The "Hey, don't we look good in our white robes?" award for preening goes to our friends across the street at the Chicago Sun-Times who just can't stop telling us about how tasteful and civic-minded they were for not playing the Springfield, Ore., school shooting story on their front page Friday.

The self-congratulation began with a page-one note to readers explaining why the shooting story was inside: They didn't want to "encourage any unstable teenager" or "alarm smaller children" with prominent coverage, it said.

The answer to that is, "Then don't run a photo, move the story off to one side and write a more subtle headline than 'Kids ambush kids,' the one you used out front for the recent Jonesboro, Ark., schoolyard ambush."

Newspapers are supposed to place the most significant, important, interesting stories of the day on page one. Responsibility, the virtue the Sun-Times has assumed in followup accounts and an op-ed in The New York Times, means figuring out how to fulfill that mandate without luridly glorifying violence in a way that incites or frightens the impressionable. That's hard sometimes, and the discussion about how the media could do it better is one worth having.

Grandstanding, on the other hand, is always easy. They should give up the practice, at least for the summer.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.